Work in Progress
You may have noticed that I have recently pulled back on my social media activity, taken down the Artformyrent.com site and slimmed down my website content. I have been very conscious of my time and have chosen to manage it more cafefully, devoting more time to my work. Any lack of online activity is due to having work in progress.
Thank you for your understanding, and I look forward to sharing the new artwork with you in my next exhibition.
Q & A with Evangeline: answering some questions
Lately I’ve been receiving mail from people around the world asking questions about the project, how I work, and where I get my inspiration. I think that inspiration is the main topic of conversation. I like to share as much about myself and my process as possible just in case it helps someone along the way to do their thing. So instead of answering privately to these emails I’m just going to lay it out there for the whole world to see.
So.. let’s get naked! Before you get too excited… by that I mean let’s be honest and tell the truth. I’m going to tell it how it is. Those that know me will agree that ‘telling it how it is’ is what I do best.
Q: How will I be able to grow as an artist?
A: Being an artist has as much to do with living as it does with making art. I always say “There are many things that I credit for influencing my art, but the most important thing was giving myself the time to live life in order to have something to make art about.”
Let me tell you, I have lived. I can’t count the amount of broken hearts I’ve had, and the amount of hearts I’ve broken. I don’t remember most of the places I’ve visited, although a few stick in my mind and every once in a while a forgotten memory comes back. I’ve started communes, worked in cocktail bars, lived in a van, worked as a Rennie, lived on a boat, did the island life, the mountain life the single life, the together life, the easy life and the hard life.
I’m just saying… art that comes from your heart and from your experiences comes out easy. You grow as a person, and you will grow as an artist. But in the meantime, the most invaluable thing you can do for yourself as an artist is to find the best local artist you can possibly find. Call them and ask if they could please please please be your mentor. There are some assholes that will say no, but there are also some beautiful artists in their twilight years that are ever so happy to help out a newcomer. It’s a tough industry and they know it. They will help you.
Q: Although I’ve been trained in Art I dont know if I’ve lost my creativity. What’s kept you going when you felt like there was no creativity left in your veins?
Art school is a funny thing. I really loved it (all seven of them), but it really sucked my creativity well dry. My first university was great. University of Nevada Reno, in my hometown was just a place for me to kill a year doing art classes while saving up for bigger and better things. To this day it remains the single most important year of my creative growth. It was a relaxing environment and I was able to explore and play with my art. It was liberating! After that I went to Columbus College of Art & Design (1996-7) and it sucked the fun out of art. It was so… methodical. In retrospect it was probably the wrong art school for me, but you see there was this really cute boy who also went there so I just had to go.
What was the question? Oh yes, loss of creativity. I can’t tell you what to do to get your painting mojo back, but I can tell you what I did after 10 years of feeling that way. First, I bought some supplies. It’s amazing how much of a difference that makes. Secondly, I set up a space. I turned my spare room into a studio even before I knew what I wanted to paint. And thirdly, I put the paint on the palette. I had no idea what I was going to paint, I just knew that I had to go through the motions. I sat there for a long time smelling the oil paints, and finally I made a mark, which led to another & another… After the first painting was done, it was easy. I couldn’t close my eyes without getting a new idea. It was all in that first step. In short, do some paint sniffing and you’ll be fine.
Q: where do you get your inspirations from?
Everywhere! There isn’t a person, an event, a thing that doesn’t inspire me. I’m a part of a larger network and if it weren’t for this network, I couldn’t do what I do. I’m going to open up a big can of ‘hippie’ on you. I just pick up on the vibrations of life and allow inspiration to come get me. Inspiration is like opportunity, and if you leave your window open it never has to knock.
Q: What other artist inspire you? or what art period?
As above, everything. I love the old greats. I mean who doesn’t get completely mesmerized when looking at the huge renaissance paintings, or even the impressionists? I love Picasso, Goya, Duchamp, Warhol, Kahlo, Emin, scheile… And I love new stuff. The cool thing now is that there is so much going on! Everywhere you look there’s an artist doing something amazing and new.
We have so many new materials at our disposal, and so much disposal to make new materials out of. It’s all a big fat beautiful mess. I love the minimalist medium based works. You know the ones, that pick a new material and do something really big that fills up a whole gallery. I find it ridiculous, but amazingly beautiful. And I like the more tongue in cheek street and lowbrow art. A bunch of young punks tearing shit up. I love it! And then we have things like new media art, social media art, illustration as high art, mail art, email art, granny art & fanny art. It’s all there, it’s all engaging, a lot of fun and terribly inspiring.
Q: What is the process you use to create your digital art? do you draw it first and put it in the computer and mess with it? what programs do you use?
I usually chuck some ink around on paper, and then draw around it. Then I scan it and play with it in Photoshop. I add some vector based stuff brought in from illustrator as well. A lot of the textures I use for backgrounds are from my own paintings, so you get the painted, delicious texture in there. The print industry is really exciting at the moment and I’m keen to discover new ways to print my digital art. Will keep you guys posted.
Q: Is there any advice you could give me? (I want to be a graphic designer and hopefully i’ll get in a university for 2012).
Sure. Make art for yourself, even when you’re in school. Also while you’re in school find the best of the best in graphic design in your area and ask for work experience. Even if you’re only doing 5 hours a week it’s a foot in the door. A lot of people end up without a job at the end of Uni all because they didn’t think about what comes after. Uni is the perfect time and place to make your connections. Get that work experience, find a mentor, and work hard.
Start keeping a scrap book or folder with all of your favorite designers. If they do something you like, figure out how they do it. Copy them until you learn it, then move on to something else. That way you will build up your knowledge of techniques and will be able to develop your own style easily.
And while you’re at Uni… don’t ever ever drink cherry flavored liqueur. Ever. Especially if you’re a little gassy. It will be really embarrassing for you when you throw up red vomit in front of everyone, your best friend will have to clean it up and you will never live it down. It’s just best you don’t.
That’s what I like
I wanted to show you some of the things I really like. Some of the things that inspire me and influence me in a big way. I enjoy looking forward into the future a lot more than I like looking backwards, and it’s because of this that I rarely talk about my influences. But it’s time to pay tribute to really cool stuff. There’s so much of it!
One of the things that really interests me is folk art, and naive art. The art happens when people aren’t worried about the art scene. Stuff done by people in farms in the middle of nowhere who have never been to art school, never heard of the big guns and don’t really care to learn about them, for that matter. Folk art is one of the humblest, most lovely art. There is something so honest in it that you just don’t find in the cities. It’s the mother of all visual story-telling.
I really dig American folk art and also the movements that glorify it. Here are a couple of searches for you so you can see what I’m talking about:
It’s been a huge influence for me over the years, and I wanted to share it with you. Some of the work I did in New Orleans was heavily influenced by this. I also did similar work in Brisbane. For a long time I couldn’t make anything other than folk-influenced art. I wanted to be humble and good. Maybe I even wanted to be a monk, and making folk art made me feel one step closer to goodness. Thankfully, now that I’m grown up and corrupt I can make whatever the hell I want. I’ll talk about my long-term battle with that later on.
In Brisbane I used to paint little business cards and post cards and leave them around the city. I couldn’t afford to have anything printed, and I liked the idea of having them sitting next to corporate business cards. They just had my name and phone number on the back, but I never got any phone calls. I wasn’t even selling anything – I just wanted to see what they would do. I wonder what happened to them… They’re probably in the bin!
x
evangeline
Art and the people who love it.
Sometimes in life we are lucky to witness an extraordinary image, something you see that completely defines how you are feeling at that particular time. Today I was that lucky. Unfortunately these are also the times when I find myself without a camera.
Two days ago I spat the dummy at work and left. Yes, I spit the dummy sometimes. It ain’t pretty, and it ain’t a regular occurrence, but it happens. This wasn’t out of the blue – I’ve been feeling it coming for a while. My only hope was that I would be able to make the change before ‘the crossover’. The Crossover is what happens when you know you’re so unhappy in your job that there’s going to be a dummy spit any second. I thought I was still in the I-can-handle-this stage, but obviously I had already crossed over. So I quit.
People quit jobs all the time, and lord knows I’ve quit a few (hundred) in my day, but I’m a sole parent and these decisions impact my son. Nonetheless, I’m happy that it happened. Part of me feels that I’ve opened up the floodgates of opportunity for great things to come. The other part of me, the responsible part, is locked away in the dungeon with gag around her mouth momentarily and will remain so until there’s not a penny in the bank.
The thing is, I want to be an artist full-time. Yes, I’m a dreamer, but I read the first chapter of The Secret and that lady said that I can have it, so I want it. NOW! Isn’t that the way it works? I figure I’ve done 33 years of visualizing it, so I’m ready to collect, just as she said.
This is my chance to really go for it. To give it everything I’ve got. The reason I’m telling you all of this is because I want to paint a picture (pun totally intended) of how I’m feeling at the moment. I’m putting an incredible amount of pressure on myself to support this habit of making art.
Close your eyes…. visualize how I feel… Now here’s what I saw:
An elderly man, riding his motorized scooter. You know, the kind that the elderly ride to the grocery store and such. He had a great big painting leaning up against the back of the scooter, sticking out half a meter on each side and strapped around the chair so as to not go flying off. and he was carefully riding it to who knows where, as if it were the last of his precious belongings. Or maybe he was taking it to raffle off at Bingo. Either way I got all teary and emotional.
So there you have it. I’m carrying all the weight of my art on my back, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have it any other way.
THE NEW ORLEANS YEARS
The year was 1998. I was living with a boyfriend in an over-priced two bedroom apartment in Metairie, outside of New Orleans. I worked at a bar called the Last Stop Lounge, a 70s joint with regulars who were still stuck in the 70s or as they called it, the ‘good ‘ol days’. It was my first job as a bartender and I had no idea what I was doing. I was too shy to card people, every time someone asked for a free drink I’d cave in and I was ridiculed daily by the regulars for being ‘different’. I didn’t belong there and we both new it. After all, I was a vegetarian.
I had turned the spare bedroom in to a studio by tacking blue carpet cushion around the entire room. It was spongy, waterproof and a hell of a place to make a mess. There were small windows above the room through which kids peeked through to see my nude sketches and giggled.
My boyfriend fancied himself a bit of a rock star poet, so we used to do the rounds in the cafes listening to poetry jams. I would take my sketch pad and draw them doing their thing, then writing whatever they were saying in the background. This became my signature style for a long time. So much so that I burnt out my style and for a long time I didn’t know what else to create. I would bring the sketches home and then make paintings out of them. Most were about 40 x 60″, some where 3 x 6′.
I’ve always liked the idea of art for the people, or painting ‘real’ people. Kids reading bad poetry didn’t ring true to me, so I decided to turn my sights to the locals. I used to take a recorder along to work and tape the conversations that the regulars were having. Usually fowl, but always good for a laugh. At home I would paint them in the same style I had been doing, with the conversations in the background. I got into a hell of a lot of trouble for taping them. Almost got fired.
I did all this for about a year, until we got a phone call from a friend asking for help. We decided to hop in the van, quit our jobs and head to Knoxville, Tennessee. In those days I was moving often, and I liked to carry a light load. Artwork is not a light load, so I had to leave it all behind. It felt like a waste to just throw it all away. I wasn’t the slightest interested in promoting myself, so nobody knew what I had been up to. There were dozens and dozens of pieces. I placed most next to a bin, and dropped the rest off at the bar when nobody was there. There was a portrait for everyone. I like to think they went home with their rightful owners.
I often think of the work I was producing then, because it was the last time I really created fruitfully before my ten year break from painting. I look at some of the artists that have made it and I think, ‘hell, I was making that sort of stuff in New Orleans’. It was cutting edge, it was young, it was street art meets highbrow. It was everything that people lapped up.
But it also makes me feel good to think that I’m not part of it. Like it was just a seed I planted but never watched grow. But that’s just the romantic me. The practical me knows they’re most likely lying in the bottom of a garbage heap.
WOMAN BEFORE A MIRROR
I want to tell you some stories of the role art has played in my life. I’m a story teller from way back, and there are some good ones to tell.
This one takes place in the 4th grade. I was living in El Carpio, Spain with my abuela. I had already developed somewhat of a reputation for a couple of things at school. The first was pulling hair and getting in fights. The second was being relatively good at art. My teacher decided it would be fun to create a class mural, and to do this she was going to hold a contest to see who would get to paint it.
We were asked to make a copy of Picasso’s ‘Woman before a mirror’. Here’s a photo of the one that I did. It’s been through a lot, as you can see. It was getting a bit of positive response from the teachers, and I heard them talk about my talents after school one day. Another girl heard it too, so she decided to rip the drawing up into little squares.
My teacher was so upset about this that she puzzled the drawing back together and glued it together for me. Of course, she then chose me to do the mural, along with the girl who tore the drawing up, and we worked on it. I suppose that was my introduction to art criticism. I still have it to this day. It makes me feel like someone believes in me.
